Weather forecast

Floods

With rivers breaking their banks, flash flooding and glacial lakes bursting, Pakistan is experiencing its worst floods this century.
At least two-thirds of the country’s districts have been affected. Scientists say several factors have contributed to the extreme
event, which has displaced some 33 million people and killed more than 1,200.

Researchers say the catastrophe probably started with phenomenal heatwaves. In April and May, temperatures reached above 40
°C for prolonged periods in many places. On one sweltering day in May, the city of Jacobabad topped 51 °C. “These were not
normal heatwaves — they were the worst in the world. We had the hottest place on Earth in Pakistan,” says Malik Amin Aslam,
the country’s former minister for climate change, who is based in Islamabad.

Warmer air can hold more moisture. So meteorologists warned earlier this year that the extreme temperatures would probably
result in “above normal” levels of rain during the country’s monsoon season, from July to September, says Zia Hashmi, a water-
resources engineer at the Global Change Impact Studies Centre in Islamabad, speaking in his personal capacity.

The intense heat also melted glaciers in the northern mountainous regions, increasing the amount of water flowing into
tributaries that eventually make their way into the Indus River, says Athar Hussain, a climate scientist at COMSATS University
Islamabad. The Indus is Pakistan’s largest river and runs the length of the country from north to south, feeding towns, cities
and large swathes of agricultural land along the way. It isn’t clear exactly how much excess glacial melt has flowed into rivers
this year, but Hashmi visited some high-altitude glaciated regions in July and noticed high flows and muddy water in the Hunza
River, which feeds into the Indus. He says the mud suggests that there has been rapid melting because fast water picks up
sediment as it moves downstream. Several glacial lakes have burst through the dams of ice that normally restrain them,
releasing a dangerous rush of water